Saturday, September 22, 2012

Where is Labour going?

By New Worker correspondent

WHERE is Labour going? That was
the question three labour activists tackled at a meeting in Harlow
last week. Rod Truan, a Harlow Labour Councillor and Cabinet member, John
Pickard, former editor of Militant
and Socialist Appeal activist and Theo Russell
from the New Communist Party opened the
discussion at a meeting organised by the Harlow Trades Union Council last
Wednesday.

Rod Truan, a
teacher, pointed out that in the last century Labour was in power for only 23
years and said: “We don’t want to see a Conservative-dominated 21st century,”
adding that the very first Labour government set out a Housing Act calling for
half a million council houses. He said Labour’s achievements in 1997-2010
included a school building programme, 100 hospitals built, and more textbooks
in schools. “But by 2010 Labour had lost the trust of many supporters, for
example, by not enabling councils to build new housing.”

John Pickard drew attention to calls for
national strike action at TUC Conference and
the Fire Brigades Union motion calling for public ownership of the banks,
saying these resulted from rank and file pressure and demands for new policies.
He said: “This generation will be the first in 100 years to bequeath a worse
standard of living to the next generation,” and said that that large-scale
industrial action in Britain
was looming.The issue for Labour, he
added, “is not extending the timing of spending cuts, but ending cuts
altogether”.

In his contribution Theo
Russell outlined why working class voters should support
Labour and the organisational link with the union and cooperative movements,
and said the NCP would like the next Labour government to end monetarist
austerity policies and restore trade union rights, income tax and the public
sector to their pre-1979 position.

He added that
the NCP calls for unions not affiliated to either Labour or the TUC
to affiliate in order to strengthen the organised working class. In the
discussion it was pointed out that 84 per cent of Labour’s income is from trade
union members, and it was announced that Harlow Labour Party is submitting a
motion to Labour Party conference to re-nationalise the railways.